Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Callie: I bought a new Windows laptop (an Acer) that has a camera built into it.
I don’t ever plan to use the camera for anything and I’d like to completely disable it.
I don’t want to just prevent apps from accessing the camera. I want to disable it completely.
Is it possible to do that? If it is, can you tell me how to do it? [Read more…]
Question from Brenda M.: I took my laptop to the shop because the screen stopped lighting up. They checked it out and told me the screen was bad.
They said it would cost almost $200 to replace the screen. I told them I couldn’t afford that so they told me I could still use the laptop by hooking up an external monitor.
I bought a monitor and hooked it up to the laptop with an HDMI cable, but I can’t get the monitor to show anything besides a blank screen.
How can I get the external monitor to work this laptop? [Read more…]
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Question from Linda: I’m looking for a new laptop Rick and I’ve noticed that the new ones on the market today don’t come with an optical drive.
I have hundreds of CDs and DVDs that are filled with photos that I need to access on occasion so my new laptop needs to have a DVD drive.
I know I can buy an external DVD drive, but I’d prefer to have it built-in.
Why on earth are they making laptops without optical drives? [Read more…]
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Question from Sarah: I’m getting ready to order this new laptop from Amazon and I have a question about it.
This laptop comes with 16GB of RAM but I can get the same machine with 32GB for about $50 more.
Do you think it’s worth paying an extra $50 to double the RAM? Will I even need 32GB? [Read more…]
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Question from Ben: Everyone I know that recently bought a computer ended up buying a laptop instead of a desktop computer.
Since no one is buying desktops anymore, why are they still bothering to make them?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]